Planets

Let’s learn about exoplanets

These planets are outside of our solar system

This is an artist’s image of the exoplanet Kappa Andromedae b, a planet 13 times the size of Jupiter.

S. Wiessinger/NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

By Bethany Brookshire

Most of us probably aren’t going far away for a vacation this year. But we can still daydream. How about a rock-climbing trip on Proxima b? Watching the lightning crash on HAT-P-11b? Maybe go to see the double sunrise on Kepler-453b? If you haven’t heard of these vacation destinations, that’s because no one has been to them — yet. They are all exoplanets.

A planet is an object in space that orbits a star. In order to count as a planet, it has to be big enough that gravity has pulled it into a roundish shape. It also has to have enough gravity to clear other objects out of its path around its star. A planet is one of these objects that orbits our particular star — the sun. When a planet orbits another star, it’s called an exoplanet.

Exoplanets have all sorts of fascinating properties. Some have two suns. Exoplanets could have atmospheres filled with hydrogen. Some have lightning storms more intense than anything the Earth has ever seen. And a few might be places where scientists could look for life. They are in the Goldilocks zone — an area at just the right distance from a star to allow liquid water to flow on the surface of the planet. They might even get rain.

Want to know more? We’ve got some stories to get you started:

Distant planet may boast the longest year: This ‘year’ is 163,000 Earth years long (6/2/2014) Readability: 7.8

Planets with hydrogen skies could harbor life: Earth microbes survived atmospheres hosting only the most abundant element in our universe (6/2/2020) Readability: 7.5

This planet’s lightning storms are like nothing on Earth: HAT-P-11b has some truly intense electric weather (6/3/2016) Readability: 7.0

Explore more

Scientists Say: Exoplanet

Explainer: What is a planet?

Like Tatooine in ‘Star Wars,’ this planet has two suns

Profile: Looking for life beyond the solar system

Small, distant worlds are either big Earths or little Neptunes

R.I.P. Kepler, the planet-hunting telescope

Scientists consider how to visit the closest exoplanet

Word find

Want to visit an exoplanet? Pack your bags! NASA has an Exoplanet Travel Bureau where you can learn about different exoplanets and take a virtual tour of what they might look like.

Power Words

More About Power Words

atmosphere: The envelope of gases surrounding Earth or another planet.

element: A building block of some larger structure. (in chemistry) Each of more than one hundred substances for which the smallest unit of each is a single atom. Examples include hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, lithium and uranium.

exoplanet: Short for extrasolar planet, it’s a planet that orbits a star outside our solar system.

Goldilocks zone: A term that astronomers use for a region out from a star where conditions there might allow a planet to support life as we know it. This distance would be not too close to its sun (otherwise the extreme heat would evaporate liquids). It also can’t be too far (or the extreme cold would freeze any water). But if it’s just right — in that so-called Goldilocks zone — water could pool as a liquid and support life.

gravity: The force that attracts anything with mass, or bulk, toward any other thing with mass. The more mass that something has, the greater its gravity.

hydrogen: The lightest element in the universe. As a gas, it is colorless, odorless and highly flammable. It’s an integral part of many fuels, fats and chemicals that make up living tissues. It’s made of a single proton (which serves as its nucleus) orbited by a single electron.

liquid: A material that flows freely but keeps a constant volume, like water or oil.

microbe: Short for microorganism. A living thing that is too small to see with the unaided eye, including bacteria, some fungi and many other organisms such as amoebas. Most consist of a single cell.

NASA: Short for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Created in 1958, this U.S. agency has become a leader in space research and in stimulating public interest in space exploration. It was through NASA that the United States sent people into orbit and ultimately to the moon. It also has sent research craft to study planets and other celestial objects in our solar system.

Neptune: The furthest planet from the sun in our solar system. It is the fourth largest planet in the solar system.

orbit: The curved path of a celestial object or spacecraft around a star, planet or moon. One complete circuit around a celestial body.

planet: A celestial object that orbits a star, is big enough for gravity to have squashed it into a roundish ball and has cleared other objects out of the way in its orbital neighborhood. To accomplish the third feat, the object must be big enough to have pulled neighboring objects into the planet itself or to have slung them around the planet and off into outer space. Astronomers of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) created this three-part scientific definition of a planet in August 2006 to determine Pluto’s status. Based on that definition, IAU ruled that Pluto did not qualify. The solar system now includes eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

star: The basic building block from which galaxies are made. Stars develop when gravity compacts clouds of gas. When they become hot enough, stars will emit light and sometimes other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The sun is our closest star.

stellar: An adjective that means of or relating to stars.

sun: The star at the center of Earth’s solar system. It is about 27,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Also a term for any sunlike star.

telescope: Usually a light-collecting instrument that makes distant objects appear nearer through the use of lenses or a combination of curved mirrors and lenses. Some, however, collect radio emissions (energy from a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum) through a network of antennas.

universe: The entire cosmos: All things that exist throughout space and time. It has been expanding since its formation during an event known as the Big Bang, some 13.8 billion years ago (give or take a few hundred million years).

virtual: Being almost like something. An object or concept that is virtually real would be almost true or real — but not quite. The term often is used to refer to something that has been modeled — by or accomplished by — a computer using numbers, not by using real-world parts. So a virtual motor would be one that could be seen on a computer screen and tested by computer programming (but it wouldn’t be a three-dimensional device made from metal). (in computing) Things that are performed in or through digital processing and/or the internet. For instance, a virtual conference may be where people attended by watching it over the internet.

weather: Conditions in the atmosphere at a localized place and a particular time. It is usually described in terms of particular features, such as air pressure, humidity, moisture, any precipitation (rain, snow or ice), temperature and wind speed. Weather constitutes the actual conditions that occur at any time and place. It’s different from climate, which is a description of the conditions that tend to occur in some general region during a particular month or season.

About Bethany Brookshire

Bethany Brookshire was a longtime staff writer at Science News Explores and is the author of the book Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She has a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology and likes to write about neuroscience, biology, climate and more. She thinks Porgs are an invasive species.

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